


You Can Fight the Hurricane

by language_escapes



Category: Elementary (TV), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2013, the first kaiju attacks San Francisco.  Joan Watson and Sherlock Holmes, separated by an ocean, watch and change their lives forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/gifts).



> Beta'd by uberniftacular, my queen.
> 
> This fusion very closely follows Pacific Rim's canon timeline rather than Elementary's. As such, there has been some fiddling with Joan and Sherlock's ages to make them fit more appropriately within the universe.
> 
> For sanguinity, who plotbunnied me. VITRIOL AND MALICE, m'dear.

**Prologue**

**2013**

Joan is twenty-seven when the first kaiju attacks San Francisco. Twenty-seven and working towards becoming a surgeon, in her residency and loving every minute of it. Twenty-seven and already well-respected, well liked. Her residency director tells her almost weekly that she’s going to be one of the best, if not _the_ best surgeon he’s ever seen.

Joan watches the kaiju- they’re calling it Trespasser- tear down the Golden Gate and switches her specialty the next day.

She may be an excellent surgeon, but she has a feeling that emergency medicine is going to be needed in the upcoming years.

******  
Sherlock Holmes is twenty-five and off his head on heroin when the first kaiju attacks in the United States.

He thinks, at first, that he’s hallucinating the large monster on the screen, that his heroin was cut with something, or that maybe he is watching an amazingly good BBC film, but then he realizes that the BBC would have to blow its budget for the next five years to have special effects that good and, oh yes, other people around him can see it too. He’s standing in a department store, not quite sure how he got there, swaying on his feet, transfixed by the ugly beast- _and other people see it too_.

When he comes down, he turns on the news and watches the reports with an intensity he hasn’t given anything since he found heroin. They are calling it a “kaiju” ( _meaning “strange creature” in Japanese, though most Westerners translate it as “monster”; Godzilla and Mothra and Gamera; deriving from a cultural anxiety about nuclear weapons and environmental destruction_ ), and nothing that the United States or the RAF are throwing at it is taking it down.

Sherlock doesn’t move from in front of his television set for the entire week, watches the footage of the nuke being dropped on the kaiju, watches it all with eyes that are gummy and sore, watches it while his body shakes from withdrawal, while his stomach grumbles from a desperate desire for nourishment.

When it’s all over and done, and the politicians and scientists are already talking about how it must have been a once-in-a-lifetime mutation, Sherlock stands up and calls Mycroft, the first time they’ve spoken in almost a year.

“I need to get sober,” he says.

“I’ll make the call,” Mycroft replies.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It isn't quite love at first sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by uberniftacular.
> 
> Dates drawn from Travis Beacham's tumblr posts.

**Chapter One**

**2014**

Joan is still in her residency, dealing with the fallout from switching specialties. Nobody will talk to her anymore. Her surgeon friends won’t talk to her because they think her switching specialties is her way of saying that what she’s doing is more important. The emergency medical docs won’t talk to her because she came from surgery, and they think she’s some arrogant asshole with a god complex. Joan doesn’t really have the energy to care, and besides, she’s used to being alone. So she just pours her sudden spare time into extra studying, into extra preparation.

Everyone on the news and in the government is saying San Francisco was a one-time event, but Joan… Joan has a gut about these things. A month after the attack on San Francisco, and everyone is ready to move on since nothing else has happened, but Joan doesn’t. She keeps two kits by her bed and two in her work locker. One kit each for evacuation and hiding; a second kit for medical emergencies, everything she can think would possibly help treat people in a kaiju crisis.

Not that there’s much research there.

Two months after San Francisco, the world lets out a sigh of relief.

Three months after San Francisco, Trespasser’s skull becomes a museum exhibit, and the world moves on. Joan continues her residency, pushing herself harder. The world has moved on, but she remembers watching Trespasser destroy San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento.

Six months after San Francisco, Joan quits her residency, fed up with the people around her and feeling like she isn’t doing enough. She signs on as a relief worker and is immediately sent to the Philippines to assist there after a series of tsunamis.

A week after she arrives in the Philippines, a kaiju attacks Manila.

Joan is in one of the exam rooms when someone screams in the emergency room. Her current patient is just a sprained wrist, nothing urgent, so she goes running out, expecting to see a more half-drowned patients, gangrene or sepsis- but it’s just a crowd of people around the television, injuries and blood forgotten as they watch in horror as a monster- a kaiju, Joan corrects herself- destroys a city in the Philippines.

“Where is that?” Joan demands, her Hiligaynon barely adequate, but she’s pretty sure this nurse’s English is worse than her Hiligaynon. He shrugs a shoulder, not taking his eyes off the poor television reception. The weather has been screwing up the signal.

“Here,” he says, sounding stunned. That’s obviously not true, so Joan looks over at another nurse who is comforting an old woman. She looks like she cut her hand open on something during the tsunamis, judging from the bloody dish towel.

“Maria, where is that attack happening?” she asks.

Maria looks at her, pupils blown wide with terror, but she’s still comforting the patient. Maria is a good nurse. Perfect for the emergency room; she never loses her head. “Manila,” she says. “Made landfall about two hours ago. The tsunamis…”

She doesn’t need to continue. Joan understands. They should have known. Trespasser made landfall after a massive earthquake; it only makes sense that this kaiju would also have caused some disruption before reaching the city. Joan nods at her, yells for another doctor to take care of her patient, and grabs her kit from her locker, out the door before she can stop and think about it. She jumps into her car and drives as fast as she can to the air field. Someone, she knows, will be heading toward Manila.

Later, Joan won’t be sure how she managed to convince them to let her join the small crowd of people going to Manila. She yelled a lot at someone with some stars on his chest, she remembers that, and she waved her medical kit in his face, but she doesn’t remember ever being actually permitted to join them. Nevertheless, there she is, feeling cramped and claustrophobic in a helicopter crammed with at least ten other people. Scientists, some of them, but at least one other is a relief worker who had the same idea as her, and a few look like they’re military of some sort. Probably going to get the perspective from the ground. She doesn’t know how they’ll possibly report back to their superior officers- the storms were already making things difficult, she can’t imagine that a giant monster knocking everything over is going to help.

She’s anticipating all manner of injuries, but she thinks that crushing wounds will probably be the worst, judging by the way the monster is knocking over buildings. Probably shrapnel wounds, impact wounds. She rummages through her kit, touches everything, puts it back. Does it again. A third and fourth time.

Her kit isn’t going to be enough.

“I don’t think anything has changed since the last time you checked your bag!” someone with an English accent shouts at her over the deafening wind. Joan looks up. There’s a man next to her, dressed in a tattered t-shirt with a vest over it. He’s a scientist, probably, Joan thinks, but he isn’t holding any equipment or carrying any notebooks, like the other scientist sitting shivering across from her. He has light brown hair and a pointy nose, and Joan thinks he’s going to die ten minutes after setting foot in Manila.

“Want to make sure I know where everything is without thinking about it,” she shouts back.

The man snorts rudely. “And you couldn’t figure that out the first three times you did it?”

Joan gives him a flat look. She really doesn’t have time for asshole scientists, not when she’s going to be trying to save lives while he takes photos or makes charts or whatever he’s going to do with his absolute lack of equipment. “Excuse me,” she shouts back at him, “for not being entirely confident that my kit is going to suffice under a kaiju attack. Given that this is only the second ever kaiju attack, and we don’t know what to expect.”

“Second, yes, but not the last,” he replies.

Definitely a scientist.

“Wow, took a lot of brainpower to figure that one out,” she snaps, irritated.

His eyebrows go up in surprise and then, to _her_ surprise, he smiles. “Rather obvious deduction, wasn’t it?” he admits. She rolls her eyes in response, and checks her kit for a fifth time. She doesn’t care what Asshole Scientist says. If checking it ninety-nine times before she lands means she gets it right on the one hundredth time she reaches for it, it’s worth it. If it saves a life that would otherwise be lost, it’s worth it.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he says abruptly, offering her his hand. Joan takes it after a momentary pause.

“Joan Watson.”

They don’t say anything else. Eleven minutes later, they land, and Asshole Scientist (Sherlock Holmes) goes dashing off in one direction, shirt transparent from the rain, and Joan runs off in another.

She spares a second to hope he manages to stay alive.

******  
Four days later, the kaiju attack still hasn’t ended, and Joan has caught maybe four hours of sleep in makeshift bunkers all across the city. She’s absolutely filthy, she’s living off of power bars from her kit, and she hurts, but the kaiju doesn’t show any signs of stopping soon. She suspects that people are probably trying to figure out a way to kill it without using nukes, given that San Francisco is basically a wasteland now, but she wishes they would hurry up and find the solution, because she can’t keep these people alive.

It’s shocking to realize. Joan has had patients die before, but of unforeseen complications, of illness and disease that no amount of medicine would fix. But this is different. She isn’t in a safe, sterile hospital. She ran out of her supplies on day one- in hour four, she thinks- and has been making do with whatever she could find. She can’t give them pills to dull their pain, or give them transfusions to replace what the body needs immediately. She can slap some gauze on wounds, later ripped shirts and sheets and whatever else she can find, and hold their hands. She can tell them, in English only, that they’re going to be okay. She can lie. She can lie, and lie, and lie, because she’s pretty sure that most of them are going to die, and the nearest hospital was destroyed on the third day of the attack. At this point, she’s pretty sure she’s going to die, but she doesn’t care right now. Instead, she pushes back her hair with her wrist, trying to keep the sweat and blood out of her eyes, and offers the stranger in front of her a smile.

“You’re going to be all right,” she says, pressing her hand back down onto the wound in the woman’s side.

“You’re lying,” the woman whispers sadly.

Joan shrugs, looking around to see if there is anything nearby that she use to keep the woman’s side bound together. She doesn’t see anything but rubble at this point. The kaiju is at least somewhat nearby- she can feel the earth shake from time to time, and she can hear its agitated roars, presumably from whenever the Air Force hits it with missiles. She doesn’t care.

“I might be,” she admits, biting her lip. “But maybe I’m not, and I’d like to hope, all right?”

The smile the woman gives her is more of a grimace, but it’s a good effort. “Me, too.”

Off to her right, Joan sees a quick flash of movement, and she twists to look at it, immediately terrified that, somehow, the kaiju has crept up on them. A stupid, brainless thought, but she can’t help it. Four days in a hellish war zone will do that to anyone.

It isn’t a kaiju. It’s a man. He’s wearing a ratty t-shirt with a vest over it, and-

Joan blinks. She looks down at the woman, whose breath is coming in shallow gasps, and then back at the man. “Hey!” she yells. She remembers him. It seems like it was years ago. She doesn’t remember his name, but she remembers _him_. “Hey, Asshole Scientist!”

It says a lot about the man that he turns and looks at her. It’s definitely him. Same brown hair, same pointy nose. He’s covered in grime and blood, but it’s still him. She jerks her head down at the woman. “I need your help, get over here!” she shouts.

To do Asshole Scientist some credit, he doesn’t hesitate. He scrambles over what was probably a building at some point and is now just a mound of rebar and concrete.

“What can I do, Dr. Watson?” he asks, hands hovering over hers.

“Your shirt,” she says. “I need it. We need to tie off this bleeding.”

She’s impressed because once again, he doesn’t even hesitate. He yanks off his vest, dropping it on the ground, and then pulls the shirt over his head. “Do you want it in strips, or…?”

“Give me the vest,” she says, “and then tear the shirt into long strips. We can use the vest as a pressure bandage and use the strips to tie it on her.”

While Asshole Scientist works on that, Joan smiles down at the woman again. “See?” she says. “I said you’d be all right. What’s your name?”

The woman smiles back and sniffles a little. “Sophia,” she replies.

“I’m Joan.”

Asshole Scientist hands her the vest, and Joan immediately presses it over the gash in Sophia’s side. If they were at a hospital, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Joan has seen far worse during her residency, working in the emergency room. She’s stitched people back together, given them some decent pain meds, and sent them on their way. But in the ruins of Manila, a wound like this could kill Sophia. Joan can’t even be sure what caused it. It’s a shrapnel wound of some sort, but there are so many things…

She forces herself to focus. “All right, Asshole Scientist,” she says calmly, “I want you to hold Sophia’s hand. Because I am going to tie off the vest, so Sophia, I want you to squeeze Asshole Scientist’s hand as hard as you’d like.”

“Because he’s an asshole scientist?” Sophia asks, gasping out a laugh.

Joan laughs with her. “He might be less of an asshole than I originally thought,” she admits, giving him a quick glance. He doesn’t look terribly offended, on the whole, which Joan takes as a win. “But mostly, because this is going to hurt, okay, Sophia? So just squeeze and scream, but try to stay still. Are you ready?”

Asshole Scientist slips his hand into Sophia’s hand, giving her a lopsided, oddly endearing smile, and Sophia holds Joan’s eyes as she quickly slips the strips of Asshole Scientist’s t-shirt around the vest, prepping them for tying down. Joan takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “On three, then,” she says. Sophia nods. “One-”

Joan ties off the vest over Sophia’s side. Sophia screams, and in her peripheral vision she can see Asshole Scientist wince, but she focuses on finishing the ties, pinning Sophia as best as she can with her knees. When she’s done, she wipes her hands on her jeans and then pushes Sophia’s hair out of her eyes. “Better?”

“You said on three,” Sophia says hoarsely, somehow managing to convey disdain.

“I lied,” Joan says simply. She looks at Asshole Scientist and nods. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Asshole Scientist says primly. He has tattoos all over his arms and chest. She can’t tell what they are, but she decides that they’re nice. It’s possible that she decides that because she hasn’t slept in four days.

“Still need your help,” she warns. “We need to get Sophia someplace safe.”

Asshole Scientist gives her an incredulous look. “Dr. Watson, we’re in the middle of a kaiju attack. There _is_ no safe place. In- in fact, if you stand up and look to the west, you can actually see Hundun. Does that seem safe, hmm?”

“They named this thing Hundun?” Joan asks, blinking, and then forces herself to focus. “Look, we need to get her further away. The hospital personnel evacuated to the southern edge of the city, they’ve been setting up tents and stuff. We need to get her there.”

“No,” Asshole Scientist says. “We won’t make it.”

Joan immediately revises her opinion of Asshole Scientist back to her original one. He is definitely an Asshole Scientist. She has been working non-stop for four days with the knowledge that she’s a drop in the bucket; she’s barely slept; she’s only eaten power bars that taste like cardboard. She is not going to sit here and listen to Asshole Scientist tell her that after all she’s done to keep Sophia from bleeding out, right here in the middle of an annihilated city with a kaiju only half a mile away, has been for nothing. “Fine,” she says stiffly. “I’ll get her there myself.”

Asshole Scientist sighs in exasperation. “That isn’t what I meant Dr. Watson. I came to find any last survivors and let them know- they’re dropping a nuclear weapon in just an hour.”

Sophia looks up at her, eyes wide. Joan immediately gives her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay,” she says.

“You lie a lot, you know,” Sophia says, but she offers a smile back.

“I know,” Joan agrees. She looks at Asshole Scientist. She really wishes she could remember his name. “What do you suggest then? Because I’m not leaving her.”

Asshole Scientist purses his lips and rocks back and forth a little on his heels. His hands haven’t left Sophia, one hand still gripped in hers, the other patting her on the shoulder in an absent rhythm. “There are- I know some people. I may be able to convince them to come evacuate you. And her.”

Joan gives him her best skeptical look. “You really think they’re going to listen to some Asshole Scientist tell them that they need to avoid killing a kaiju because there’s a doctor and a patient somewhere in the rubble?” She keeps her voice as steady and soothing as possible, for Sophia. For her, too. The idea of being in a city that’s about to be nuked is making her want to throw up. But she’s a doctor. She understands bedside manner, even if there is no bed.

“They’ll listen to me,” he says simply. He gives Sophia one more soothing pat on the shoulder, then stands. “I’ll go get someone to help. Try to conceal yourselves. I doubt the kaiju will come back this way, but you never know.”

Asshole Scientist looks at Joan for a moment, his eyes big and sad, and then he turns and sprints away. Joan watches him until he disappears from view, working to control her breathing. They have one hour.

She looks back down at Sophia. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s find someplace cozy.”

******  
When Asshole Scientist finds them again, they’re hiding in the blackened rubble of what was probably a supermarket. There are rotting foods all around them, but Joan wanted someplace close to where he found them before, and besides, there was some fruit that was still good, and she was hungry. Sophia is asleep, leaning against Joan, when she hears his shout.

“Dr. Watson!” he yells. “Sophia!”

Joan carefully dislodges Sophia, propping her up against the fruit stand, and runs to the- well, it isn’t a doorway, not anymore. The walls just sort of disappear. Still, she can see him, and she waves. “Hey!”

Asshole Scientist snaps around, his face filling with instant relief. “Dr. Watson, thank God. I have obtained a ride for you. Where is your patient? We must evacuate immediately.”

“Help me,” she says. She’s so tired. She wants to get Sophia out and then maybe sleep for a thousand years.

Asshole Scientist follows her, and together they scoop up Sophia, making a chair with their arms. Sophia stirs in her sleep, but doesn’t wake up. Blood loss, Joan knows. She doesn’t know if she’ll make it. Probably not. But she isn’t going to stop trying.

“Did Hundun leave this area of the city?” Joan asks. After a while, kaiju screams all sound the same. She can’t tell if they’re close or near anymore.

Asshole Scientist shakes his head grimly. “Not quite.”

Joan doesn’t like the look on his face, but doesn’t say anything. She remains silent until they reach an ugly, broken looking jeep and Asshole Scientist helps her put Sophia in the passenger seat. She frowns. “We’re supposed to evacuate using this heap of scrap metal?”

“It was all they could spare,” Asshole Scientist admits. “She still runs, even if she runs poorly.”

“Well,” Joan says, as she climbs into the back of the jeep, “I guess there probably aren’t many roads left anyway.”

“Indeed,” Asshole Scientist says, and turns the jeep on. Joan shoves her hair out of her eyes again- next time she does this, she’ll have to remember to bring hair ties in her pack, or maybe just cut her hair off altogether- and leans forward between the seats so she can keep an eye on Sophia.

Joan hears a low rumbling sound, figuring it to be the jets overhead. There are a lot of them now, swarming the skies. They’re probably getting into place to drop the nuke. 

Asshole Scientist, with a sharp breath, shoves the jeep into gear and they go roaring off. Joan clings to the seat, getting her balance, and scowls at him. “Be careful,” she says. “Sophia isn’t doing very well.”

“While I appreciate your attention to your patient, Dr. Watson, I would also appreciate if you would pay attention to such things as our surroundings. We are not,” he says, biting off the T, a weird verbal tic she’s pretty sure she’s never heard before, “in the best of circumstances at the moment. You will want to hold on.”

Joan looks in the rearview mirror.

There is a really big kaiju behind them.

For an instance, Joan is transported back to when she was a kid, to seeing _Jurassic Park_ in the movie theatre with her brother. He was convinced she was too young to go, but she’d bothered him incessantly until he’d relented. Joan was terrified, and for years, the only things she could remember about the movie were Velociraptors in a kitchen and a Tyrannosaurus in the rearview mirror.

She’s reminded of that image now, as a kaiju- _the_ kaiju, Hundun- looms up over the wreckage around them, strangely faceless. The name Hundun makes sense now, Joan notes dimly. It looks almost like the dinosaurs that terrified her as a child, with a large head that seems to be made up mostly of teeth. It’s bipedal, she notes, with stumpy arms that end in claws.

Still, it’s the teeth that she fixates on.

“Fuck,” she breathes quietly.

Asshole Scientist doesn’t bother responding, just stomps on the gas. Joan doesn’t berate him this time as she falls back in her seat. In front of her, Sophia groans, and she hauls herself forward, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror, with Hundun looming close, and her other eyes on Sophia. She’s sweating. It’s almost ninety degrees in Manila, despite it being February, but Joan has a bad feeling that her sweat isn’t just from the heat. She presses her fingers against Sophia’s jugular.

Her pulse is erratic.

“Fuck,” she says again, for entirely different reasons. She looks at Asshole Scientist, who is focused on the destroyed road in front of him, swerving around pieces of crumbled buildings and downed power lines, and says, “Don’t get distracted.”

Before he can do more than shoot her a questioning look, she squeezes between the two seats, swinging a leg over his arm, careful not to jolt it from the gearstick. 

“What are you doing?” Asshole Scientist yelps, but he doesn’t slow down for even an instant. Joan keeps wiggling until she’s awkwardly sitting on the dashboard, crouched over, her feet planted on other side of Sophia.

“Taking care of my patient,” she says, and reaches down for Sophia’s makeshift bandages. She’s bleeding through them, Joan realizes. She glances at Asshole Scientist, but he’s still shirtless. Her own shirt is unhygienic, covered in other people’s blood and dirt, but that can’t be helped. She yanks the tank top off over her head, thankful that she’s wearing a sports bra, and quickly undoes the strips of shirt holding the vest to Sophia’s side, substituting her own shirt in and tying them back up. She keeps her hands on her abdomen, searching for the nearest artery to press down on.

From her unusual perch, she can see Hundun much more clearly. It’s still following them, its jaw working. There are only a few buildings between them now, and Hundun has the advantage of just being able to knock them over to reach them. Joan takes a shaky breath. “It’s big,” she says.

“Brilliant observation,” Asshole Scientist says dryly. “Hold on, Dr. Watson.” It’s all the warning she gets before he spins the wheel frantically and they go sliding sideways. Joan bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from screaming and braces her hands on the frame of the jeep. 

Hundun swings its head around, opening its mouth wide and letting out a truly terrifying roar. She doesn’t see any eyes in its head, nothing that she recognizes as eyes, anyway, but it’s clearly watching them, following them. Joan squeezes her eyes shut, blinking back sudden tears, and then opens them again, letting go of the jeep so she can press her hands back against Sophia’s side. “You’re going to need to drive faster!” she tells Asshole Scientist.

“Yes, Dr. Watson, I am aware.” She doesn’t think she’s imagining the note of panic in his voice.

Joan watches Hundun stomp after them, slow and almost clumsy. She hasn’t paid it much attention in the past four days, too busy trying to evacuate people and helping people who couldn’t evacuate, but she remembers it trying to maneuver around the PBCom Tower. She reaches over and grabs Asshole Scientist’s shoulder.

“Turn around,” she orders.

Asshole Scientist gives her a wild look. “What?”

“Turn around!” she shouts, immediately frustrated. Behind them, Hundun roars again, smashing over a church. “This thing- it isn’t very agile. It’s too big to turn around quickly. Drive toward it, you’ll buy us some time.”

“I’ll also be driving _away_ from our destination,” he says, but she sees his hands tighten around the steering wheel. She shoves her feet more firmly on either side of Sophia and clings to the frame of the jeep just in time. The jeep screams as Asshole Scientist spins them around, but it doesn’t fall apart on them. They go speeding toward the kaiju.

Joan holds her breath. It’s very possible she just consigned them all to death, but she’s pretty sure it’s their best chance. As long as the kaiju can follow them in a direct path, it has the advantage. If they can just force it to start turning around, they’ll be able to get around it. 

“Drive between its feet,” she instructs Asshole Scientist. “It doesn’t have long enough arms to grab us, and it might get confused.”

“It still has very large teeth and feet, Dr. Watson,” he says, but he adjusts their course. Between Joan’s feet, Sophia stirs. She reaches out and wipes Sophia’s hair from her face, stuck there by sweat.

“Don’t wake up just yet, Sophia,” she says quietly. “You don’t want to see what your would-be saviours are doing.” Beside her, she sees Asshole Scientist’s mouth quirk up into a smirk.

“Here we go, Watson, hold on!” Asshole Scientist bellows, and then Hundun is right in front of them, no more buildings, destroyed or otherwise, between them. Joan’s breath stutters in her chest and she sinks down on the dashboard, cringing away from it automatically. Asshole Scientist lets out a small whimper before he bits down hard on his lip. 

Hundun swings its head down to look at them, and a large, black tongue slides out from between its teeth. Joan presses her lips together and holds onto Sophia. Asshole Scientist reaches out swiftly, patting her hand once, and then grabs the gear stick again, slamming it into gear and speeding up. They go careening forward, and Joan screams in mindless terror as they fly between Hundun’s legs. Dimly, she notes that Asshole Scientist is screaming as well. 

Then they’re beneath Hundun, and she can look up and see its underbelly. Unlike the rest of it, it isn’t armoured. Joan makes note of that even as she slides off of the dashboard and on top of Sophia, trying to make herself smaller. Hundun’s legs are on either side of them, and she can see from the muscles that it’s starting the slow process of turning.

But then they’re behind it, driving away. Joan watches it with a wary eye, but Hundun is still facing away from them. Its tail is waving in agitation, but Asshole Scientist is driving fast enough that they’re out of range before it can sweep them to the side.

“All right, I hope you have a path worked out so we can head south again,” Asshole Scientist says, keeping his eyes focused forward as he swerves around the rubble that they can’t just drive over.

Joan nods, pulling herself back up on the dashboard. “If you can get us about seven streets east, that road is still pretty undamaged. You should have a clear shot, and there are enough buildings still standing that Hundun won’t have a good line of sight on us.”

Asshole Scientist bobs his head up and down. “Keep an eye out for a path east. I think most of the roads are blocked.”

“How long until they drop the bomb?” Joan asks, licking her lips. Sophia’s breathing is still stuttering, but Joan’s shirt hasn’t been soaked through yet. If they can get her better medical attention soon, Joan thinks she might have a shot.

“They gave me an hour to retrieve you,” Asshole Scientist says. “I think we’ve used twenty minutes, but I was not exactly watching the time.”

Joan wonders who this guy is, that he can so easily buy them- buy _her_ , and Sophia- time like that, that he can requisition a jeep for two strangers. Perhaps she was wrong and he isn’t actually a scientist. He doesn’t look like any sort of military she’s ever seen, or politician, but appearances can be deceiving.

“Why are you here?” she blurts out, putting her hands back over one Sophia’s side and pressing down.

Asshole Scientist takes his eyes off the road long enough to give her a lopsided, oddly sweet smile. “I needed some samples.”

“So you _are_ a scientist,” she says.

“Quite. Do you see a path?”

“Not yet. Two more blocks, maybe. There are still some buildings standing- we might get lucky.”

Joan spares a moment to turn her focus back to Hundun. It still hasn’t turned around, and now there are jets surrounding it, hitting it with missiles. Its tail is lashing around and its teeth are snapping at them. It seems to have lost interest in them, for the moment. She lets loose a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, and then glances to her right.

“There,” she says, pointing. Asshole Scientist nods, turns the wheel, and then they’re on a street with less debris than the others.

They drive for a while. Joan loses track, too busy dividing her focus between Sophia and Hundun. Asshole Scientist makes another turn, and then they’re heading south, toward wherever he thinks they’ll be safe. Joan leans forward and keeps her fingers pressed on Sophia’s side, the heartbeat she can feel a grounding influence.

And then they careen around another collapsed building to a large, clear area with tents everywhere and people in uniforms running around.

Joan could cry from relief as Asshole Scientist skids to a stop and they’re surrounded by people who are still in clean clothes, with clean hands, who have clean bandages. She surrenders her patient to a doctor in a pristine white coat (and Joan hates him, for a moment, for standing here, safe and clean, while people are dying in the city, still dying, going to die faster as soon as they drop their bomb) with a few brief instructions, and then lets herself be hustled into another helicopter. 

She doesn’t think she’ll be able to relax, with four days of adrenaline flowing through her on top of an insane kaiju rush, but to her surprise, the moment she sits down a rush of exhaustion washes over her. She closes her eyes, too tired to do anything else. She feels the helicopter rise into the air a moment later, but doesn’t bother to open her eyes. She doesn’t really want to see the mushroom cloud rising.

Next to her, someone shifts. She thinks she knows who it is. “We make a good team, Dr. Watson,” says Asshole Scientist’s now familiar voice, his English accent slightly slurred. She imagines that he’s trying not to fall asleep as well.

“We might be some of the only people in the world who drove toward a kaiju that was stalking us,” she agrees.

“It was an insane idea,” he replies, but it doesn’t sound chastising. It sounds… admiring.

“It worked.”

Asshole Scientist hums, and she feels his hand move over to bump against hers. 

They sit there in silence for a while. Joan can’t be bothered to talk. She’s tired, and she’s hurting, and the adrenaline is crashing hard. She’s on the verge of sleep when Asshole Scientist says, “What does it mean?”

“What?” she asks.

“Hundun. What does it mean? You… made a face. Like you knew what it meant.”

Joan opens her eyes and turns her head. Asshole Scientist still isn’t wearing a shirt. He has blood on his hands, same as her. His face is filthy. He isn’t like the doctor, with his nice white coat, or the people in uniforms that still had creases in the trousers. He was out there, like her. He was helping people. That matters, to her.

“Chaos,” she replies finally. She turns her head back forward and lets her eyes close once again. “Primordial chaos.”

Asshole Scientist makes a contemplative noise, and Joan finally falls asleep.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabo San Lucas, and they meet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All thanks and praise to my glorious beta, uberniftacular.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far! You've been very supportive, and I truly appreciate it.

**Chapter Two**

**1 June 2014**

He meets her again in Cabo San Lucas, the funny little doctor he initially met in Manila.

He can’t say he’s particularly surprised. Joan Watson struck him as an immensely capable woman, terribly brave, and dedicated to her work. In the months between kaiju attacks, while he was working on creating a chemical neutralizer for the kaiju blue that obliterated San Francisco’s groundwater, he thought of her sometimes and wondered what drove her to bully people into taking her to an active kaiju attack site. But he put her out of his mind so that he could work faster to try and find some way to eliminate the effects of kaiju blue. San Francisco will never be livable again, in part because of the nuclear fallout, but also because the waters are completely contaminated. Manila is much the same, but Sherlock holds out hope that they can reverse some of the damage with the neutralizer he created.

Cabo San Lucas is the first active site where they’ll test it, in the hopes of stopping the contamination before it can begin.

Kaiceph is elsewhere in the city, and Sherlock is carefully scraping samples of kaiju blue into specially treated vials, when he runs into her again. She’s shouting to people and waving her arms, her hair tied back in a looped ponytail, her hands bloody like they were before.

It’s what he remembers best about her, when he thinks of his time with her in Manila. All the blood on her hands, and the determined set of her jaw.

“Dr. Watson!” he calls, waving to her. He jogs over, and she raises her eyebrows at him.

“Um,” she says, and he realizes that she likely doesn’t remember him.

“We met in Manila,” he says, “We-”

“No,” she says, interrupting him. She glances at the patients she has strapped onto stretchers, and shouts a question at someone nearby, pointing at one of the people. She gets a shouted answer back from a woman in once-pink scrubs. “No,” she says again, turning her attention back to him. “I remember who you are. You’re Asshole Scientist.”

Sherlock blinks a few times, and then nods. “Yes, you did call me that rather a lot. I _did_ introduce myself.”

“You’ll excuse me if I didn’t think remembering one asshole scientist’s name was really important in the midst of a kaiju attack,” she says dryly, and then turns her back to him, dropping to her heels to work on a patient.

Sherlock looks about at the area around them. Her operation is more efficient this time, less of a one-woman crusade. He can’t tell if that’s because she brought in her own personnel, or if she just drafted people where they stood.

He needs to move on, leave her behind so he can observe the testing of the neutralizer. She’s saving lives, but his little chemical experiment could save the remains of the city. He needs to walk away from her and let her be.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

Dr. Watson looks up at him, eyes going wide. Sherlock hesitates for a moment, thinking she’s perhaps annoyed at his offer. He doesn’t have any medical training, certainly, but he’s wearing a vest, a t-shirt, a waistcoat, and has an ugly flannel shirt tied around his waist, and he put it all on because he remembered, before boarding the plane that Mycroft got for him, the small doctor, her hands using his tattered t-shirt as a bandage. He doesn’t have medical training, and he’s here to try to stop kaiju blue, but he thought that if he ran into someone who was injured, he could at least press a shirt to their side.

“Do you know any first aid?” she asks finally.

“No,” he replies honestly, “but I have a fair set of hands, and I wore extra shirts just in case.”

If anything, she looks more astonished. “You wore-” She shakes her head. “Don’t you have science-y things to do?”

Sherlock hesitates. The honest answer is, of course, yes. He doesn’t know why he’s stopped and offered to help- he can save an entire city, not just a few people, surely that’s more important- but. 

“I do,” he says finally. “But-”

“Honestly, Asshole Scientist?” Dr. Watson interrupts, “We have more than enough hands. I’m not even really necessary here, Gabriela has it completely under control.” She gestures to the woman in the scrubs that were once pink, but are now so covered in concrete dust they look sad and faded. She’s coordinating ambulances, it seems. Sherlock watches with interest for a moment, analyzing who is doing what, how they’re working, how tired each of them seem to be, and how many patients they have.

“Come with me,” he says abruptly.

Dr. Watson’s eyebrows, already raised in incredulity, shoot up to her hairline. “Excuse me?”

“Come with me,” he repeats, forming the idea in his head even as he speaks. “You’re not essential here, you said it yourself. I could use an assistant.”

“An assistant,” she says flatly.

“A partner,” he amends. “You do know something about chemistry, I presume?”

Dr. Watson bites her lip, looking at the people around her. He can see her doing the same calculations he had, patient to doctor ratio, number of emergency vehicles, severity of injury.

“I’m going to be headed more toward the central parts of the city, where Kaiceph just was,” Sherlock tells her, trying to convince her. “There may still be people trapped there, needing assistance. Your assistance.”

Dr. Watson lets out an explosive sigh. “I can’t; I have work I need to do here.”

He licks his lips, but then nods reluctantly. “Of course, I understand completely. It would be… unfair to take you away from your duties. Yes, yes, of course. Of course,” he says. He realizes he’s babbling and purses his lips, nodding at her again and bouncing on his toes. Then he gives her one final nod and turns away, heading away from the ridiculously devoted Dr. Watson and back toward Kaiceph, toward the kaiju blue that has already been splattered on the ground and the buildings from multiple, ineffective missile strikes.

“You are going to get yourself killed!” Dr. Watson yells after him.

He turns and grins. “Perhaps,” he calls back. “But there is work to be done, and I am the one to do it.”

She shifts her weight from one leg to the other, and then throws her hands in the air. “I can’t let you go out there to die. Hold on.” She runs over to Gabriela, but they’re too far away for Sherlock to hear what they’re saying, and while his lip-reading abilities are by no means insufficient, he simply isn’t a strong enough Spanish speaker to both read their lips _and_ translate what they’re saying. He resigns himself to the mystery, and rocks back and forth, eager to be on his way.

He is perfectly confident that the neutralizer will work- he spent four months in a laboratory doing little else other than breaking down the chemical structure of kaiju blue and deciding how best to create the neutralizer. His education is… unsystematic, to say the least, but while he has no certificate or diploma to verify his chemistry abilities, his work speaks for itself. 

Watson heads back toward him, swinging a pack onto her shoulder. “I’m only going so you don’t get killed,” she says. “And to see if there are any other people to evacuate. Any word yet on how they’re going to kill this kaiju?”

“Kaiceph,” he provides, heading north. Kaiceph has been less efficient at smashing buildings than Hundun or Trespasser was- he suspects that the rather large horns on either side of its head rather limit its peripheral vision, thus keeping it focused on straight line damage- and significant portions of the city are still intact. “And they’re hoping to lure it back out to the ocean and nuke it there.”

“So still nuclear weapons, then,” Watson says, scrambling over the scattered wreckage of a few cars.

“If you have a better idea, Dr. Watson, please let the United Nations know,” he says. He stops and sniffs the air, frowning. “Do you smell that?”

Watson gives him a look, but obediently sniffs the air. She immediately wrinkles her nose. “What is that?”

Sherlock thinks for a moment, pursing his lips. He taps his fingers against his leg, the fingering for Bach’s _Chaconne_ coming to him automatically, the last piece he played before heroin took his interest from him and the kaiju stole it away forever.

“It smells like guano,” he says after a moment, finally remembering why it smells familiar. He takes a long sniff of the air, wafting the smell toward him. He thinks it’s just northeast of them. He doesn’t check to see if Watson will follow him, just dashes off, ducking under a crumbled street lamp and leaping over a downed palm tree.

“You know what guano smells like?” Watson calls after him. He doesn’t answer, just takes another sniff of the air. Of course he knows what guano smells like. He used to catalogue various types he found, when he was a child. Bat, seabird, pinnipeds from the zoo. Once, when Mycroft broke his bicycle, he’d found Sherlock’s catalogue of guano in his pillows. He knows guano when he smells it.

He wants to see his neutralizer deployed, needs to witness it, but he has a feeling, a gut instinct, that this is important. He sniffs again and hears a sigh behind him.

“Guano smells a bit like phosphorus, Watson,” he says, carefully walking around a few downed trees. “Or rather, I smelled phosphorus, and the only explanation is guano.”

“Really?” she shouts after him. “There was no better explanation than guano?”

He lets out a grunt of frustration. “It could be important, Watson!” he yells back to her, and then resolves that, no matter how much he appreciates the funny little doctor, he isn’t going to let himself get distracted by her skepticism. Guano is just guano everywhere else in the world, but here there is a kaiju, and kaiju appear to be biological creatures, which means they have biological functions, which means-

“Ah,” he says in satisfaction when he turns a corner. The ground is splattered with a pale electric green waste. “Guano.”

“Great,” says Watson, right behind him. He jolts and turns. He hadn’t heard her come up behind him. He hadn’t expected her to follow. “Kaiju shit.”

“Does your kit include thick gloves, Watson?” he asks, digging into his own sack and pulling out his pair, tugging them on.

She watches him, and then opens her mouth in disbelief. “No,” she says firmly. “I am not digging around in kaiju crap. I’m not.”

“Guano,” he corrects. “And I’ll take that as a no, then, hmm?”

The look she gives him is eloquent. He shrugs and swings his pack off his back, pulling out some empty vials. Then, carefully, he works to collect some samples. “It was difficult to work out a neutralizer for the kaiju blue,” he says conversationally, examining the vial and making sure the guano isn’t burning a hole through it. He’d lost several samples of kaiju blue that way, in Manila, before he’d come up with a solution. The guano seems less toxic than the kaiju blue, though. “We first had to work out the chemical structure of the kaiju blue. Acids, of course, we know the chemical structure for, and once you-”

“And once you know the chemical structure, you can obviously put together a neutralizer, yes, asshole, I know the basics of chemistry,” she says, sounding annoyed. She’s still standing several feet away from the kaiju guano, but she’s watching him and his process intently. “Is your neutralizer endothermic or exothermic? And is the resultant salt going to be as toxic as the kaiju blue itself?”

Sherlock bites his lip, standing and moving over a few feet to a fresher sample. “That’s what we’re here to test today,” he admits. “By the time I was able to work out the chemical structure of the kaiju blue, we were, regrettably, out of samples. The neutralizer I created is almost entirely theoretical. I am confident that it shall work, of course, I’m just not entirely sure of the final outcome.”

He tucks the five vials of guano back into his bag, making sure the packing material will keep them stable. He really doesn’t need a bag full of broken glass and guano. He turns and gives Dr. Watson his best smile. “That should suffice for now.”

“Great,” Dr. Watson says, rolling her eyes. She takes a look around the area- it’s entirely evacuated by now, the streets empty. “Where is the neutralizer being tested?”

“Out toward the beach,” Sherlock says, and turns abruptly, trying to find Kaiceph and figure out the best route to avoid it. “San Francisco’s shores will never be the same, so we’re hoping to avoid the same happening here.”

“Let’s try to avoid a kamikaze drive toward a kaiju this time, okay?”

Sherlock smiles. “That sounds like an excellent plan.”

******  
He is surprised that Dr. Watson continues with him to the beach where the neutralizer is going to be tested. He rather suspected that she would either find some people in need of her help, and he would wind up leaving her behind with his extra shirts, or that she would decide to go back to Gabriela and her team. Instead, she sticks with him the entire time, listening to him ramble about the chemical structure of his neutralizer and questioning some of his conclusions. She’s refreshing, the way she can keep up with him. She doesn’t even have a background in chemistry, but she understands enough to suggest alternative solutions to the one he built.

A team of scientists are working frantically on the beach, wearing atrocious hazmat suits and wading through the toxic kaiju blue. Sherlock is watching them from a rock outcrop, scribbling notes in his notebook on whatever he sees. He generally prefers to simply memorize his observations and conclusions, but he’s found that the team Mycroft has assigned to him is sadly lacking in telepathic abilities, and as he is not yet able to go weeks without sleep, he does need to provide his research to others.

“So are they testing the neutralizer on a small sample first?” Dr. Watson asks, standing next to him. Her arms are folded and she isn’t looking at him, but he can see her eyes flicking underneath her sunglasses, watching everything. She’s interested.

He hums and underlines some of his notes. “There are some tide pools that the team has found ideal. We’ll be testing there first.”

“And you’re sure the neutralizer isn’t as toxic as the kaiju blue? I only ask because their blood is beyond anything we’ve ever seen, and while I don’t doubt that you’re smart, I do have to wonder how equipped anyone is to handle a task this big.”

Sherlock flicks his fingers against his leg and then lifts his hands up, rubbing his lower lip with a finger. “I confess that my education has been less than straightforward, but I assure you, Dr. Watson, what I lack in formal education, I more than make up for in focus and imagination. One can have all the education in the world, but if they lack imagination, they are simply a pale imitation of a true scientist.”

“Mr. Holmes!” one of the scientists shouts up at him. Sherlock is fairly sure that it’s Bradstreet, but in the glare of the sunlight off the hazmat masks, he can’t be entirely sure. “We’re ready to begin!”

Sherlock nods and waves his hand in the air, hoping that he’ll understand it as a go-ahead. He looks at Watson. “Shall we get closer?”

“You don’t want to observe from up here?” she asks.

“There are certainly advantages from a bird’s-eye view; however, I feel that it might be best to observe the reaction from up close.”

He goes scrambling down the rock face, somehow managing to avoid falling over and splitting his skull, and listens to Dr. Watson follow a little more sedately. Bradstreet waves him over, and Sherlock goes.

“Your brother wanted us to make sure that you actually wore a hazmat suit during the testing, Mr. Holmes,” Bradstreet says, holding out his arms, a suit cradled in them. 

Sherlock wrinkles his nose at the suit, but takes it anyway. It wouldn’t do to argue, not when it could delay the testing. Kaiceph is being contained at the moment, and they’re working to drive it out onto a different beach than this one, but they all know that the kaiju are unpredictable at present. It could change directions at any moment, putting them in danger and ruining any hopes of the test. They need to work quickly.

“Do you have an extra suit for Dr. Watson here? She’ll be observing the tests as well.”

Bradstreet nods and tosses Watson a suit. “There you are, ma’am.”

They get dressed quickly, tugging on the suits over their own clothes. He hops up and down, waiting for the team to put the last few instruments into place. It took them hours to get it all set up, which is why he went wandering the city in the first place in the search of new samples, but now he wants to get this done. He needs new data. He cannot work without new data.

Finally, Bradstreet gives him a thumbs up.

“Good,” he says. “Now, shall we?”

******  
“You’re going to break it,” Dr. Watson says, sounding aggrieved. “Hand it to me.”

He ignores her, sliding the newest test tube in between his fingers. He’s already holding five, but he suspects that his years of working on his dexterity are working in his favor and he’ll be able to hold at least three more.

The test was… not entirely unsuccessful, but it wasn’t nearly as successful as he hoped. The neutralizer is certainly viable as it is, but it works too slowly. The land and water will still become partially contaminated before it can finish working, and that isn’t acceptable. He will not accept anything less than perfection, and if he can just get enough samples this time, before they nuke Kaiceph and the city into oblivion, rendering everything useless to him, he might be able to solve this once and for all. Before the next kaiju attack. Because it is becoming increasingly obvious to the world that the kaiju aren’t simply going away.

“Hey,” Dr. Watson says again, crouching down next to him. “Give it to me. You collect the samples, I’ll pack them up. That’ll free up more of your time.”

He can barely hear her over the noise in his head. It didn’t work. It doesn’t matter that he was working with a substance totally unknown to the scientific community- he still should have been able to solve it. He is an excellent chemist, a superb and focused researcher, and he’s _brilliant_ , he should have solved it, and he will, he won’t rest until he solves this, because people are going to _die_ from this, they are dying, they have died already, the kaiju attacks themselves aren’t the only thing perilous to humans.

“Hey!” Dr. Watson shouts, and Sherlock jerks, startled. He looks at her, focusing on her face through the hazmat mask. Her eyes are concerned, but her face is otherwise blank. Her jaw is still fixed in determination. “Tell me what you need me to do right now.”

“I-” he pauses, looks down at his hands. He’s managed to not slosh any of the kaiju blue on him. He closes his eyes and tries to tamp down the high pitched buzzing that he knows no one else can hear. It is unique to his brain, the static that comes when he has too many thoughts in his head. He takes a deep breath and then opens his eyes again. “Would you be so good as to assist me in collecting these samples?” he asks.

Her smile is small, but unmistakable. “Yeah. I can do that.”

They don’t talk for the next hour, but it isn’t necessary.

******  
They practically have to drag him away from the site before they nuke Kaiceph.

“I don’t have enough samples!” he screams at Bradstreet, and then digs his hands into his eyes, because he’s said this almost fifteen times already, and Bradstreet doesn’t seem to be listening.

“You’ll have to make do, Mr. Holmes,” Bradstreet says firmly. “Because they’re going to nuke Cabo in about fifteen minutes, and we need to be in the air. Now.”

“C’mon,” Dr. Watson says, pulling on his arm. He looks frantically around him, trying to see if there is anything else he can bring with him before they leave.

 _It didn’t work_ is ringing through his head, an angry mantra that he can’t push away. _It didn’t work._

“I need to be here,” he says stubbornly. “I can solve this.”

“You need to leave,” Dr. Watson says resolutely, her voice brooking no argument. “You can solve it in your lab, still alive. You stay here, you’re going to die. Let’s go.”

She’s right. He knows she’s right. Every atom of his body knows that she’s right.

He still wants to stay.

“All right,” he concedes, and allows Bradstreet and Watson to shove him into the waiting helicopter. Watson climbs in alongside him, holding her pack carefully. Her bag is as full as his with samples. Two of his extra shirts are working as additional padding in the bags, to keep the samples separate and also to cushion them.

They’re in the air two minutes later.

“I apologize,” Sherlock says after a while, after the air ignites and a mushroom cloud goes up behind them.

Dr. Watson raises an eyebrow. “For what?”

“I know that you would have preferred to remain with your fellow doctors.”

Watson makes a thoughtful sound and shifts in her seat. “Like I said, Gabriela had things handled.”

“Nonetheless.”

“Nonetheless nothing. You looked like you needed help, and my help wasn’t needed with the other doctors. You have nothing to apologize for.” She sounds genuine. He smiles at her, and she smiles back. It’s a wide, bright smile, and it makes her light up, as clichéd as it sounds. When he first saw her, she was covered in dirt and sweat and blood. She’s still covered in all three, but her smile makes those seem distant. He’s momentarily stunned. Then she leans forward and points at his notebook. “Want to go over your notes? I’ve been told I’m a great listener.”

“I suspect you’re rather more than that, Dr. Watson,” he says honestly, and flips the cover open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I know about chemistry: jack. For all you science types, I do apologize for the errors I made. It turns out you can't learn chemistry in a day.


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asshole Scientist offers an invitation; Lieutenant Pentecost offers a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a dead WIP, I promise! I'm sorry this took so long; real life got in the way.
> 
> Unbeta'd chapter.

**Chapter Three**

**2 September 2014**

She isn’t surprised when she runs into Asshole Scientist in Sydney. He helps out at the triage site for a while and then, during a slow moment, they sit down, their backs against a broken, crumbling wall, and Joan offers him a sandwich.

He eyes it suspiciously. “What is it?”

Joan smiles. “Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.”

Asshole Scientist jerks his chin up, staring at her with wide eyes. “That’s my favourite.”

“I thought it might be,” she admits. “I brought it in case I ran into you.”

They eat quietly for a while. Joan relishes the opportunity to relax. She doesn’t ask Asshole Scientist how his tests are going, and she doesn’t tell him about the months she’s spent traveling, finding people who can teach her about real emergency medicine, emergency medicine that doesn’t rely on easy access to hospitals and sterile equipment.

After a while, though, she has to ask. “You know, I can’t call you Asshole Scientist forever. What’s your name?”

His look is almost wounded, but she thinks she can see some amusement lurking there as well. “It’s Sherlock Holmes.”

She pauses in picking apart her turkey sandwich. “Sherlock? Really?”

“My brother’s name is Mycroft,” he informs her, as if that makes everything better.

When they’re evacuating Sydney, Joan is pulled into a different helicopter than Sherlock, but he shouts after her, “You need to be in Seoul on the 15th! Be there, Dr. Watson! I will vouch for you!”

She doesn’t know what he’s talking about until she’s back at her apartment in New York City. She doesn’t spend a lot of time there anymore, subletting it whenever she knows she’ll be away for more than three weeks, but it’s still available to her when she needs it. She turns on her computer and it’s all there in the news. A UN conference in Seoul to discuss the kaiju crisis. By invitation only.

Joan bites her lip. She doesn’t know if a shouted invitation counts.

She pulls up the website for the JFK International airport and starts looking for a flight to South Korea.

**15 September 2014**

“Dr. Watson!”

She’s trying to convince the concierge of the Grand Hyatt to let her into the Grand Ballroom, where the UN special conference is meeting, when she hears him. She looks up, trying to find him through the crowd, but everyone is either in military uniforms or lab coats.

Which helps, actually. He’s the only one in an electric orange shirt. She waves. “Dr. Holmes!”

His stride hitches momentarily, and then he’s by her side. “Actually, Dr. Watson, it’s just Mr. Holmes. But please, call me Sherlock.” He turns to look at the concierge, who is giving her the dirtiest look she’s seen since she switched specialties. “This woman is my guest, sir. She will be accompanying me to the conference.”

“Of course, Mr. Holmes,” the concierge says, and she can see how strained his smile is. Mr. Holmes gives the concierge a bright smile and takes her by the elbow, leading her away.

“What did you do to that concierge?” she hisses at him as he guides her through the crowd.

“I did nothing,” Mr. Holmes replies. “It’s my name. It both opens and closes doors to me, depending on which of my family they are most familiar with. In this case, the Seoul Grand Hyatt is familiar with my father. Hence, the strained smile, the forced politeness, and the extreme desire to stab me as soon as my back is turned.”

He says it all with only mild bitterness.

“Mr. Holmes-”

“Sherlock.”

“Sherlock. Why did you invite me here?” she asks, figuring it’s best to just get straight to the point. Joan isn’t sure why she’s brushing up against people wearing stars and eagles on their shoulders, or why the few civilians here look like they’ve been pried from their labs with a crowbar. She isn’t a scientist, and she isn’t military, and she doesn’t have any great insight on the kaiju threat. She’s a doctor. That’s all she is, that’s all she wants to be, and she’s done the best she could with what she had.

“Because, Dr. Watson, you’re the only person I’ve seen on the ground at every single site,” Sherlock replies seriously. He waves a hand at the people surrounding them. “These people? Excellent with tactics, superb theoretical scientists, but they’ve been confined in laboratories and situation rooms, and they know _nothing_ about the realities of what we face. You do.”

“I hardly think I’m qualified,” Joan starts to say, but Sherlock whirls around, looking her dead in the eye. He’s several inches taller than her, and she has to tip her chin up to meet his gaze. 

In the three times that she’s met Sherlock Holmes, he has always had an extreme energy in him. Whether he was driving a Jeep, collecting kaiju guano, or simply sharing a sandwich with her, he was never still and, despite everything around him, never really _serious_. Focused, yes, but he brought an almost childlike innocence and excitement to everything he did.

He’s serious now. He’s completely still, and he’s focused on her.

“There is no one in that room that I trust to know what a kaiju attack looks like from a ground perspective,” he says. “They are, for the most part, good people who are good at their jobs. But only a few of them have been at individual attack sites, and I assure you, none of them have been at all three since Trespasser. If you cannot trust your qualifications, trust my judgment. We will need you and your insights.”

“And yours,” Joan says.

The corner of his mouth quirks up. “And mine, of course. I solved the kaiju blue problem. They will, naturally, listen to me.”

She rolls her eyes and pushes past him.

He has to scramble to catch up.

******  
Two days later, Joan still doesn’t know why she’s here.

“They aren’t getting anything done!” she says in exasperation, flinging herself onto Sherlock’s bed. Sherlock carefully shuts his hotel door, locking it and sliding the chain in place.

“They are politicians,” he says simply, as if that were an explanation. Which it is, Joan isn’t naïve, but she still runs her hands through her hair.

“I just- when I read about the conference, I thought that maybe some concrete work would come out of it. Instead they’ve spent two days arguing about which cities were hit hardest.”

Sherlock hums and moves to sit next to her. Joan moves over and scoots back until her back is resting against the headboard. Their shoulders bump together, and she feels, rather than hears, him sigh. “As if it were a competition. I agree, it is quite ridiculous.”

“At least they’ve agreed that nuclear weapons aren’t a viable long term solution,” Joan says, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. She has a headache, and her back is sore from maintaining perfect yet tense posture. “We can’t waste this conference. Other than that guy on the first day, Dr. Schoenfeld, no one has brought any ideas forward. The UN managed to get all these people here; we need to do something.”

There is a momentary lull, and then Sherlock says, slowly, “Is this the general ‘we’ or the personal ‘we’?”

Joan opens her eyes and rolls her head to the side so she can look at him. “Do you have any ideas?”

******  
On the third day, Joan raises her hand.

When the current speaker (who is talking about infrastructure damage, yes, they’re _all aware_ that the kaiju damage the infrastructure) acknowledges her, Joan takes a deep breath and stands up.

“With all due respect,” she says, trying to hide how badly she’s shaking, the eyes of over a thousand people turning to focus on her, “it seems to me that we might accomplish more if we split into action groups. I think we can all agree that the infrastructure damage done by the kaiju is immense; however, I also think we can agree that the goal of this conference should not be to discuss damage that has already occurred, but instead to workshop ways to prevent it from happening in the future, and possibly to look for ways to fight the kaiju.”

“Here, here!” yells someone in the audience, and suddenly the Grand Ballroom is awash in conversation, people talking over each other and pointing and waving over others. Joan blinks, surprised at the quick reaction. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who felt like they weren’t getting anywhere.

Another hand shoots up, and a man stands up. He’s handsome, and dressed in an RAF uniform. It takes a moment, but Joan recognizes him as the speaker from the first day, the one whose sister died in the first attack. “She’s absolutely right,” he says, his voice stronger than hers was. “I propose we take an hour to decide what action groups are needed, and then divide up.”

There is another murmur of agreement, and the current speaker blinks a few times, and then nods. “Of course.”

In the general commotion, Joan sits back down, relieved that something is finally going to get done, but she doesn’t have time to get comfortable. The RAF officer is suddenly in front of her.

“You’re Dr. Joan Watson?” he asks, holding out his hand. Joan takes it automatically, frowning.

“Yes,” she says. “And-”

“Lieutenant Stacker Pentecost,” he says, nodding curtly. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Dr. Watson.”

“I-” she starts, and then stops, confused. He takes pity on her confusion and his stern features break into a smile. He is really quite handsome, she notes, unable to help herself.

“The man who sent me here has a brother who apparently won’t shut up about you,” he says. “I’ve heard about your work at the attack sites.”

“I’m just doing what I can to help,” she says, reaching up and pulling her hair back into a ponytail automatically.

He nods again, as though he expected her to say that. She doesn’t know who Lieutenant Stacker Pentecost is, or how he knows Sherlock’s brother, or why Sherlock apparently babbles about her, but he’s giving her the impression that he wants to talk to her about something important.

“I was wondering if you would lead the medicine action group,” he says, surprising her. She expected something else. What, she doesn’t know, but she didn’t expect this.

“I- I’m just a doctor,” she stammers, backing up and bumping into the bustle of people behind her.

“A doctor that has been at every attack since the first one. The _only_ doctor, as far as we can identify.”

“There- there are others,” she protests, and Lieutenant Pentecost nods again, his face back to grim and stern. She wonders if he has always looked like that, or if the kaiju have made him prematurely old. 

“Dr. Watson, I do not doubt that other medical professionals have been present at the kaiju attacks. But you are the only one who has been at all of them. You’ve performed multiple courageous acts in order to save civilians. From what I understand, you were also instrumental in the research that went into neutralizing the kaiju blue.”

It’s the first Joan’s heard of it, if that’s true, and she makes a mental note to talk to Sherlock about exaggerating her role at the attack sites. “I did my job,” she says firmly.

“And we need people who know their job to lead the action groups,” Lieutenant Pentecost says. “There are other doctors here today, Dr. Watson, and maybe a third of them have actually had boots on the ground. We need the right people to get the job done. _You_ are the right person.”

Joan hesitates, and Lieutenant Pentecost continues. “I am not asking you to do anything more than lead the action group, to talk to the other doctors about what you’ve seen, and assist in coming up with an actual plan for future attacks. Because I think you and I both know that there will be future attacks, no matter how much we wish otherwise.”

He’s a compelling speaker, Lieutenant Pentecost, she’ll give him that much. She stares up at him, waits until he blinks and glances away, and then nods. “Fine. But I’m only agreeing to lead the action group. So we can get something accomplished around here.”

There is a ghost of a smile on his lips that she doesn’t trust, but he agrees blandly, shaking her hand again and disappearing into the crowd as people around her shout about different action groups that are necessary.

Joan stands still for a moment, watching the Lieutenant’s back, and then turns to find Sherlock. They need to have _words_.

******  
“I am working with idiots!” Sherlock declares, bursting into her hotel room. Joan doesn’t look up from her notes, used to Sherlock somehow knowing how to bypass her door security after three days of the same thing. She waves her hand at her desk where two aspirin and a glass of water are already waiting for him. She tried to offer him Scotch after the first night, but he’d reacted badly to that, and since then she’s stuck with an offer of headache relief. He downs the pills quickly and then sits down on the edge of her bed, careful not to disturb her papers.

“Scientists still rubbing you the wrong way?” she asks distractedly, flipping over to her third notebook, trying to make sense of Yoshida’s kaiju bunker plans. Even though her group is ostensibly focused on medicine, they’ve added emergency preparations in as well, having decided that working in the aftermath of an attack is only so effective. They’ve drafted a number of systems engineers over to their team. It’s fallen on Joan to translate between the two halves of the team. 

“They are scared,” he laments. 

Joan looks up, raising her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t they be? Giant monsters destroying entire cities, massive loss of life, contamination of ecological systems…”

He rolls his eyes. “They ought to use that fear,” he says. “Instead it is paralyzing them. None of them are willing to _act_. They just want to sit inland somewhere and spin theories. They lack the spirit of adventure, the willingness to go to the attack sites.”

“They’re scientists, Sherlock,” she says, as gently as she can, unwilling to talk about how certain doctors on her team are frustrating her by expressing the same sentiment as Sherlock’s scientists. “They never expected to have to deal with something like this. Spinning theories from a safe distance is what most of them probably expected.”

He scowls at her, but then twists to look at her notebooks. “Are those… schematics?” he asks.

“We’re considering evacuation procedures right now,” Joan explains, turning the notebook to face him. “Maybe an early warning system of some sort? I have a few other doctors and safety engineers working on creating a proper HazMat protocols for first responders…” she trails off, tapping a pencil against her mouth. There’s so much to consider, and while she suspects that some of it may not fall strictly under her purview, she’s concerned that it may slip through the cracks otherwise. Most of the engineers, when she went to steal some, were talking about robotics and cybernetics, enraptured by Schoenfeld’s idea, or on how to potentially build a structure large enough to keep the kaiju out.

Joan doesn’t care about fighting them, and she doubts there is any sort of structure they could build that would keep them away. All she wants to do is save as many lives as she can.

She doesn’t notice that Sherlock has gone quiet until a few minutes later. She looks up, surprised, because there isn’t much that has managed to silence him in the short time she’s known him. He’s staring at her. “What?” she asks.

“I may have some seismologists among my team,” he says, abruptly looking away. “They may be useful in establishing some sort of early warning system. A few oceanographers as well- I’ve wanted them off my team for a while, I’d be more than happy to pass them over to you.”

Joan shakes her head. “I don’t know anything about that sort of thing. But if you think they might be able to put some ideas together for the presentations tomorrow afternoon, send them over and I’ll carve out a place for them to work.”

She returns to her notebooks, trying to piece together Yoshida’s math and measurements. She almost doesn’t hear Sherlock’s quiet, “I am glad you came.”

Almost. She smiles to herself.

******  
“Dr. Watson.”

Joan looks up from her salad, recognizing the voice instantly. Lieutenant Pentecost is standing in front of her table, holding a clipboard bulging with papers.

“Lieutenant Pentecost!” she says, surprised. She waves at the chair across the table from her. “Please, sit.”

He nods once and then does, carefully setting the clipboard down. “I’ve been reviewing the assessments your team put together for the presentations tonight. I understand Dr. Josefina Muñoz is speaking for you?”

Joan nods. “She’s the one who wrote the paper on treating people who’ve been exposed to kaiju blue. She’s brilliant.”

Pentecost nods soberly. “I have no doubt about that. However, having looked over the plans, I’ve noted that a great deal of your work focuses on emergency protocols and how to decrease the loss of life during an attack, rather than afterwards.”

She shifts uncomfortably. When they were split up, the UN representatives had done little more than tell them to figure out whatever they could. She worries, now, that perhaps she was wrong, and the scientists and military advisors were working on emergency response all along, and she just wasted three days of work in strictly the medical field. “I- yes,” she says, running a hand through her hair. “It seemed to me that the best way to treat wounds from kaiju attacks would be to ensure there were no wounds. We did, of course, talk about how to deal with kaiju blue infections, and how to address any potential injuries and illnesses that may appear in the future- we did not neglect our job- but-”

Pentecost holds up a hand, silencing her instantly. “I am not suggesting you neglected your duties, Dr. Watson.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Then why…?”

“You aren’t the only person who has discussed the necessity of procedures to protect civilian life in a non-military fashion,” Pentecost says. “Many people have suggested a variety of potential procedures and protocols. The difference, Dr. Watson, is that only a handful of them sat down and submitted an actual plan.”

“There’s only a few thousand people here,” Joan says immediately. “Most of them are military personnel. That’s not surprising.”

Pentecost studies her, his gaze far more intimidating than Sherlock’s. “It hasn’t been announced yet,” he says finally, “but we will be proceeding with Dr. Schoenfeld’s idea.”

“Oh. Good,” she says, though she didn’t take much away from Schoenfeld’s presentation other than ‘big robots’.

“While we have high hopes for a mechanized solution, we are not relying on it. The UN has decided to form a specialized agency that they’re tentatively calling the Pan Pacific Defense Corps that will focus on defense in _all_ of its meanings, not just militarized ones.”

“I see,” she says, not entirely sure why Pentecost is telling her this. She’s just a doctor.

“The Pan Pacific Defense Corps will have a number of different divisions. We’ll have a division looking at passive defense- they’re currently talking about building walls- as well as another division focused on building clean bombs,” he says with a twist in his voice, giving Joan the impression that he doesn’t care much for either idea, “while we’ll have something else called the Kaiju Science Division. We’re looking for Sherlock Holmes to assist in that division- his work on kaiju blue has been revolutionary.”

“I agree,” she says. “He’ll do an excellent job.”

“I won’t break down the entire structure of the Corps for you, Dr. Watson,” Pentecost says, leaning forward, “but there is one division that will be of interest to you. The Kaiju Medicine Division.”

Joan raises her eyebrows. “I presume that it will focus on the treatment of kaiju victims?”

Pentecost nods. “In part. It will also be in charge of designing emergency protocols, such as the ones you’ve submitted, and researching ways that the kaiju remains could be used for medical advantages. These are all loosely defined, you see, until we truly start working. And the Kaiju Medicine Division will work very closely with the Kaiju Science Division, especially with regards to the protocol development. Engineers, systems analysts- they’ll be as much a part of the K-Med Division at the beginning as they will be part of K-Science.”

Joan nods. “It makes sense.” 

“The UN wants you to head the K-Med Division,” Pentecost says, without any build up.

Joan stares at him. “What?”

“There are a number of doctors who have worked at the emergency sites, Dr. Watson, but very few who came to this conference, and even fewer were willing to step forward and lead as you have.”

“No,” Joan says, shaking her head. “No. I don’t care what Sherlock has told you, I don’t care what anyone else has said- I’m just a doctor!”

Pentecost frowns. “An excellent doctor, and one who has developed an excellent introductory set of emergency procedures.”

She shakes her head again. “I didn’t do that alone. I worked with a number of people and-”

“And you can take those people with you,” Pentecost says firmly. “We are not asking you to do this alone. We are asking that you lead them.”

“Someone else can do it,” she says desperately. She does not want this. She’s just a doctor. Her place is on the ground, helping as many people as she can get to. 

“There is no one else,” Pentecost says. “We need you.”

He’s serious, she realizes, studying him. He really thinks that she is the one for the job. She blinks and then remembers her salad, sitting untouched in front of her. The lettuce is beginning to wilt, and she’s still hungry.

“Let me think about it,” she says.

Pentecost rises, nodding graciously. “Of course. I will be in conference room C for the rest of the day, until the presentations tonight. When you decide, come find me.” He walks away, leaving Joan to her salad. She considers it for a moment longer and then decides that, no matter how hungry she still is, she doesn’t want it. She throws it out and goes go find Sherlock.

She finds him in the lobby, arguing loudly with someone dressed in a lab coat. Joan rolls her eyes. Some of the scientists are ridiculous. They’re at a conference; there is no need for a lab coat. She wonders if this is one of the scientists that have been driving Sherlock to distraction for the past few days.

“Excuse me,” she says, stepping between Sherlock and the woman, who looks relieved when Joan tugs him away. She looks up at Sherlock, releasing his arm. “Have you talked to Lieutenant Pentecost lately?”

“The Lieutenant is not particularly fond of me,” Sherlock says immediately. “We rarely converse.”

“That isn’t an answer,” she says, used to the way Sherlock evades questions by now. He’s very good at it. 

Sherlock fidgets, fluttering his hands against his thighs. “Perhaps.”

She whirls around. “Did you recommend me for a position in their Kaiju Medicine Division? Because, Sherlock, you should have consulted me first. I don’t want to be stuck in some building somewhere. I want to save lives, not research kaiju blue for cures for cancer! If you had _talked_ to me, I would have told you that, and-”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Sherlock interrupts flatly.

She pauses. “What?”

“When I last spoke to Lieutenant Pentecost, he requested that I join their experimental Kaiju Science Division and continue my work with neutralizing kaiju blue, and perhaps begin experiments with kaiju guano. At no point in our conversation did we discuss you. You made it clear the other day that you did not appreciate my attempts to ensure that your substantial efforts were appreciated. Thus, I did as requested, and have not mentioned them to anyone since.”

“Oh,” she says. She frowns. “He wants me to lead the Kaiju Medicine Division.”

“You are uniquely qualified for the position,” Sherlock says immediately.

She shakes her head. “I’m just a doctor, Sherlock. The Lieutenant talked about the protocols my team put together as if I had done it myself, but I didn’t. I don’t understand anything that Yoshida wrote about bunker designs, and the seismologist you sent to me was so far over my head I just gave her my blessing to start experimenting; I have no idea what she’s actually doing. I’m not qualified at all. Give me broken bones and blood, and I know what to do. Nothing else.”

He rocks back on his heels, considering her. She’s wearing flats today, since she was intending to spend most of the day on her feet, preparing for the presentation tonight. He seems much taller when she’s in flats.

“He’s asking you to lead the K-Med Division,” he says finally. “A leader delegates, Watson. A leader identifies what needs to be done, and then finds the experts who can accomplish those needs. Based on your work in the field and here at the conference, I would argue that Lieutenant Pentecost has found the perfect candidate.”

She wants to shout in frustration. “I’m not that person,” she argues pathetically. “I’m here to save lives.”

“Arguably, you can save far more lives by leading the K-Med Division than you ever could on the ground,” he says easily.

And the truth of it, she knows that already. Joan has had the same thought several times over this past week. That’s why she argued so strenuously to talk mostly about wide-scale, sweeping developments that could be implemented in coastal cities across the world, rather than discuss kaiju blue toxicity and potential mutations caused by that toxicity. She spent last night drafting a plan on how to do mass first aid trainings focused on treating the wounds one finds in a kaiju attack. She’s spent the entire morning thinking about how to create a mobile medical team that can fly out to kaiju attack sites, and how to train them.

“You’d be excellent in the position,” Sherlock says quietly, uncannily predicting her thoughts.

“I’m just a doctor,” she says one more time, helplessly.

“It just so happens we need a doctor,” he replies.

******  
“I’ll do it,” she says, looking up at Lieutenant Pentecost.

“Excellent,” he says. “The conference ends tomorrow afternoon. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps is putting together a base on Kodiak Island. They hope to have it operational by the end of the month. You have that long to pack what you need and put together your preliminary team.”

Joan presses her lips together and nods. To her surprise, Lieutenant Pentecost smiles and holds out his hand. “Welcome to the team, Dr. Watson.”

“Thanks,” she says, shaking his hand. She waits until he walks back into conference room C before taking a shaky breath.

She has a lot of work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to figure out how the Seoul Conference went down was difficult, and eventually I just gave up and decided that I would make it up as I went. Trying to figure out the organization of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps was also frustrating, so I did what I could. I request the suspension of disbelief in all of these matters, as well as all scientific matters.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is an experiment for me! I have never done a WIP, not since I first started writing fanfic eons ago, but because this fic is chaptered, I figured this would be a good time to play. As a reassurance, I have always finished every fic I've started.


End file.
